We have a surprisingly crowded arthouse slate on offer at the moment. With that in mind, how are things playing out at the box office for specialty and smaller budget films? Today our resident entertainment lawyer, Brandon Blake of Blake & Wang P.A, examines the state of the often-forgotten arthouse box office, and what’s on offer for the year end.
Eo Holds Well in Week 2
Slideshow and Janus Films brought us EO, the film that claimed a dispirited donkey as its star- and it is doing surprisingly well with audiences as well as awards programs. We saw EO win the Cannes jury prize this year, and it opened at only two NYC locations to start with. It’s held well through its second week on-screen, netting a little over $23, 200 over the 5-day holiday period, and a little short of $17,000 for the 3-day weekend. This brings its cume to date to $50.7K. It will open in LA locations later this week, with showings at Alamo DrafthouseDTLA, Santa Barbara’s Riviera Theater, Los Feliz 3, and Laemmle Royal. It has a somewhat ambitious further slate planned, starting on Dec 9th and expanding further in January 2023.
The Fabelmans Plows Ahead
Likewise, despite its limited location opening in just LA and NYC, we see TheFabelmans expand to a far broader 638 theaters as part of its Week 3 run. Based loosely on the life of Steven Spielberg and his career, it follows an aspiring teen filmmaker through their early life. It has an impressive 3-day gross in the bag, clocking in at $2.2M, and its 5-day gross for the holiday period hit $3.1M. This brings its cume to a total of $3.4M, and it has also managed a No 6 ranking at the general box office to boot. Currently, it’s playing best in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago, and, of course, LA and NYC. There’s great hope of this one keeping its longevity through the greater holiday period, too.
As for new openings, we see All the Beauty and Bloodshed, a Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film Festival, take $33.1K over only three NYC screens for its 3-day, and $42.5k for its 5-day. It, too, will be expanding to other screens through the first weeks of December.
Leonor Will Never Die, a Sundance debut, pulled in a modest $3K, but that’s not too bad for a single screen, and it will be expanding later in the month. Meanwhile The Inspection, an A24 property, expanded into 32 markets this week, grossing $89K for 3-day and $103K in the 5-day, with a gross of $174K.
In an arena that’s been sleepy (to say the least) for the early part of 2022, we now finally see a fight for arthouse screen space from a ton of worthy contenders, each with strong critical feedback and solid audience response as well as festival awards. Of course, this is the time of year where we see Oscar contenders come out to play, as well as some of the key pre-Oscars awards. They will no doubt be competing with other solid specialty fare from this year, including Triangle of Sadness, Tár, Aftersun, The Banshees of Inisherin, Holy Spider, Decision To Leave and many others.
It’s encouraging to see such a solid box office for the arthouse industry, even if it is somewhat to be expected for the Oscar season. Hopefully we will continue to see growth in this sector through 2023.